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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 power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats 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 a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer