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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist