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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned 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 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen 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 mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist