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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; 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 won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist