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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. 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 seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist