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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people 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 executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure 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 other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist