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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn 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 representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical 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 US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful 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 choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist