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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer