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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital 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 control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn 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 additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer