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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning 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 provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready 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 substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist