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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer