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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation 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, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics 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 additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves 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 give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist