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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is 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 the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates 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