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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist