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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary 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 fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer