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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state 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 the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind 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 world that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing 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 Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist