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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change 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 years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting 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 house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer