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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent seats 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 second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist