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What, exactly, 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 right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist