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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed all 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 the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer