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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure 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 seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent positions 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 critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire 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 harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer