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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial 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. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

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 upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer