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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic 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 asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist