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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, 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 Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process 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 first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist