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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist