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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial 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 additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, 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 alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist