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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved 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 under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist