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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer