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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. 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 values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer