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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions 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 writer