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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 declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, 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 debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians 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 autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer