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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist