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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist