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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist