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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern 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 strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist