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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election 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, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer