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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

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

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats 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 belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel 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 writer