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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good 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 rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology 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, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist