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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer