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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, 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 redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer