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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion 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 worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist