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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 power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, 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 shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more 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 progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist