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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

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 voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s 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 also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct 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, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist