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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric 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 the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to 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 explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area 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 democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer