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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries 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 seized 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 embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive 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 complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to 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 power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives 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 inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist