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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult 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 time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all 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 appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality 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 demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer