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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps 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; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer