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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic 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, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist