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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 tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky 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 himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer