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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – 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 anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, 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 objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer