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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, 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 supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer