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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

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

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; 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 likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament 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 Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer