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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new 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 era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer