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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer