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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State 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 Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area 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 means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument 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 valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. 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 inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something 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 lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer