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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; 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 fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist