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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process 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 considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle 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 columnist