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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

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

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate 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 occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist