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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial 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 even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer