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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer