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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority 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 September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer