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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures 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 recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver 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 liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn 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 representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members 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