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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the 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 dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share 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 redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist