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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may 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 attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off 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. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled 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, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: 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 other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist