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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area 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 genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure long-term positions 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, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members 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