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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn 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 genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; 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 battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer