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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split 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 measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist