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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist