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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, 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 address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer