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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries 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 seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer