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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer