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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force 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 columnist