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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s 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 revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist