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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer