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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term 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 critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist