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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, 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 humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

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 melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington 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 time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer