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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped 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 abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist