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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist