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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 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 across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist