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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 unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, 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 operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist