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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district 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 truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates 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