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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist