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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, 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 situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen 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 fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist