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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – 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 situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. 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 lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer