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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control 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 response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, 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 objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. 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 Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle 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