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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation 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 – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer