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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle 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