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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. 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 little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist