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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: 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 critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer