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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. 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 installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions 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 second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist