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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance 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?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different 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 the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors 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