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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right 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 his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer