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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist