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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. 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 keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening 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 the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant 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 criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic 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 the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. 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 cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to 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 significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer