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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

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

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer