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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning 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 first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions 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 maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members 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 time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist