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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing 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, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most 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 undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist