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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted 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 as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats 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 delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled 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 genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates 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