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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 vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels 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 management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is 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 reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer