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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country 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, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members 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