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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer