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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, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – 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 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 Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel 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 writer