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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense 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 actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing 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, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist