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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control 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-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed 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 emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer