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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled 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 possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: 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 without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after 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 fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist