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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer