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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist