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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled 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 closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from 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 design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ 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 incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer