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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, 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 take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer