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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic 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 genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist