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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved 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 developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right 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 undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence 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 GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist