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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions 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, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – 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 pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer