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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own 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 engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire 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, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel 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 writer