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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. 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 for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define 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 merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist