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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

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 embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his worst impulses. 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 retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, 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 negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics 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 institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer