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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area 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 genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer