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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes 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 office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer