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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own 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 actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer