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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic 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 take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings 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 columnist