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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members 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 writer