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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer