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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created 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 genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent seats 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 second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. 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 does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist