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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist