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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer