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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in 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 state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist