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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer