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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, 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 define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. 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 required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer