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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now 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 shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

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

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, 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 Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle 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 measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist