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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 tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, 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 redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. 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 doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire 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 select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, 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 become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer