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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist