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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer