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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: 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 implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, 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 worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. 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 reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer