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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

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 embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition 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 elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict 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 successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist