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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’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 investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer