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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for 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 harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer