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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, 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 its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist