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

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable 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 after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist