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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process 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 argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer