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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines 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 bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system 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 critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for 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 population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, 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 part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer