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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California 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 provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates 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 writer