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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 tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist