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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

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

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force 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