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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York 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 proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist