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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication 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 successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist