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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more 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 district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce 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 democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer