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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really 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 meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer