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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology 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 budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time 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 new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist