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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

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 largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist