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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist 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 Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer