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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, 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 people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist