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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 power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, 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 alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true 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 distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved 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 televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer