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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. 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 Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer