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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition 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 choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer