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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. 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 boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address 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 true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist