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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats 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 years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for 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 targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far 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 won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members 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