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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy 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 initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist