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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens 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 humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim 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 required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition 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 select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist