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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication 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 care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote 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 suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer