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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions 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 belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, 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 measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: 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, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves 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 testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer