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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly 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 additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist