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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second 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 unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required 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 reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer