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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, 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. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 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 actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist