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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created 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 implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist