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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force 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 columnist