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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election 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 process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. 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 opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist