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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries 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 political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer