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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential 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 shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; 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 once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist