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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight 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 practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer