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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 determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true 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 situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist