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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum 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 seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary 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 still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist