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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial 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 asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, 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 attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP 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 Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge 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 more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: 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 doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings 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