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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital 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 politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist