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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 authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent 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 government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down 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 issue of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer