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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power 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 party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital 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 significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer