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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – 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 anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House 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-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct 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 columnist