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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues 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 has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer