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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, 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 process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning 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 initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer