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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. 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 keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, 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 California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate 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 principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist