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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 initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; 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 these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process 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 critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe 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 Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer