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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority 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 institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer