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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed 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 seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats 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 also emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst 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 pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer