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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 determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens 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 presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves 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 seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans 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 revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist