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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down 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 dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim 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 Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, 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 still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer