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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections 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 little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created 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 opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer