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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome 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 process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue 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 time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist