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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening 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 maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is 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 Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors 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