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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of 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 approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world 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 disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist