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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer