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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘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 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. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’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 something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist