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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist