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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats 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 years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something 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 Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist