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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. 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 capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist