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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped 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 federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 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 special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up 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 engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part 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 testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist