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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial 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 just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able 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. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power 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 Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer