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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say 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, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer