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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, 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 long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue 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 time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer