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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures 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 permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined 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 mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members 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