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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist