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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once 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 fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. 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 authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer