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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer