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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation 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 have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist