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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may 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 Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer