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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm 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 necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist