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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist