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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind 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 world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is 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 Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist