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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the 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 appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist