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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority 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 ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer