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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer