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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘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 more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist