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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner 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 deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, 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 actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer