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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 crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist