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What, precisely, 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 become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled 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 create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group 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 Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist