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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors 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