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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 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 upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist