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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain 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 presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’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 next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, 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 occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering 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. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer