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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion 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 objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer