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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, 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 installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist