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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. 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 fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become 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 give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist