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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering 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 required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer