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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist