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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process 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 provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, 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 actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel 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 writer