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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic 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 ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer