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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear 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 executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 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 in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer