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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party 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 reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer