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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization 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 blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote 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 process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise 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