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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction 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 draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer