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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the 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 control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could 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 congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more 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 Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district 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 truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, 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 reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount 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 necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer