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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process 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 alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still 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 authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist