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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist