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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy 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 first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions 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 incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer