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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power 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 institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist