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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: 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 power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking 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, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable 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 elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist