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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats 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 likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time 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 take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist