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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: 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, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions 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 a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle 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 reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer