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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 initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, 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, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer