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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials 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 impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant 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 new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist