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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme 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 imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans 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 Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives 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 associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer