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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist