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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 crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. 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 continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, 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 the right to redraw their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, 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 lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer