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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch 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 executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed 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 federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer