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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 authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing 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 management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer