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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation 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 redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, 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 taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer