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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: 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 genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings 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 Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer