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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power 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 member of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle 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