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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, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries 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 a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist