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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist