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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 congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning 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 critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats 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 substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer