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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created 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 means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist