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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 crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; 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 once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer