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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist