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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district 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 truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist