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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of 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 Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism 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 budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist