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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance 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 California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause 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 after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist