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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist