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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level 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 representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer