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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ 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 retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions 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 other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist