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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric 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 additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something 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 transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer