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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, 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 first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire 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 world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made 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 able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist