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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, 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 anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist