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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, 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 power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist