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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist