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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result 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 opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist