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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country 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 hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer