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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer