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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become 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 power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. 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 the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist