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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 authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer