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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different 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, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far 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 lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five 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 time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer