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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct 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 columnist