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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional 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 across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions 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 maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer