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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful 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 voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist