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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district 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 genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’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 compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist