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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist