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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 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 special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats 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 other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. 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 California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist