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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw 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 behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete 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 address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist