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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – 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 executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn 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 representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation 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 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 GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer