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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent 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, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer