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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP 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 Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country 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 Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer