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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist