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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer