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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people 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 continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; 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 also emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern 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 democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist