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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack 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 GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer