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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist