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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority 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 the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, 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 the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure 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 years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist