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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire 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 somewhat moot. 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 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a logical 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 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 secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized 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 become a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist