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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry 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 California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the level 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 representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist