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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure 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 give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist