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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. 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 Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation 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 also following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist