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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

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 in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched 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 time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer