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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; 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 administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued 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 never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic 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 Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist