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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal 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 issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist