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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist