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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into 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, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made 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, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer