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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions 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 other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer