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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, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different 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, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer