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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist