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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist