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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 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 next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly 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 democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate 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 great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer