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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, 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 claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning 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 first critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist