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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes 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 lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ 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 guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist