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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, 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 recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge 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 measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates 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 Guardian US writer