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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, 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 demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer