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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful 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, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist