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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer