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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential 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 shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions 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. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner 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 influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer