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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – 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 resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic 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 longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. 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 its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist