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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination 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 dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control 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 provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, 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 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer