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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, 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 conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle 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