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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 initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states 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 control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist