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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system 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 argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s 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 motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate 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 more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist