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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 power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, 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 fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional 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 electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. 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, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist