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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House 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 redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer