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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer