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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, 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 question of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended 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; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant 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 objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist