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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. 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’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer