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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 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 special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer