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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more 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. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, 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 still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members 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