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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to 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 ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer