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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer