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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 determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question 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 abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in 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 recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly 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 characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication 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 successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer