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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 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 Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce 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 representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist