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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, 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 situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings 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