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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing 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 argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm 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 required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members 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 columnist