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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved 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 redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; 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 successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist