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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of 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 embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer