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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions 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 the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ 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 better world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members 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 writer