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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist