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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 declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent 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 stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer