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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist