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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, 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 persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a causal 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 engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist