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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer