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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire 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 elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer