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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology 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 power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist