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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts 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 keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure 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 years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement 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 US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer