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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered 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 claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 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 approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer