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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down 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 U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power 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. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist