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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting 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 closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer