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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated 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 not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, 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 time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer