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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal 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 shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer