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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem 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 could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer