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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting 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 blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer