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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist