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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved 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 delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district 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 democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer