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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer