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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people 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 executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer