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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

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 approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, 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 power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer