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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist 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 voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled 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 maps via impartial redistricting panels, 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 proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more 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 Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave 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, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist