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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group 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 the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist