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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, 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 seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical point: 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 in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist