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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic 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 not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use 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 part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist