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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 power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist 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 captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains 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 authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer