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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. 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 Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, 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 aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication 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 successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer