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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement 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 become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. 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, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer