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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 power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed 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 objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist