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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution 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 additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives 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 made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of 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 manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer