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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the 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 the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act 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 boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant 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 find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer