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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down 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 dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer