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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs 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 moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct 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 columnist