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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership 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 legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

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

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led 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 independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer