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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist