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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, 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 clearly intended 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 the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning 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 Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer