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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members 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 writer