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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable 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 attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy 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 better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic 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 sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist