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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may 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 Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic 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 representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent 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 sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer