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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. 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 passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer