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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now 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 do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer