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What, exactly, 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 vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now 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 uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act 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, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state 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 mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making 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 still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer