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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch 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 institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions 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 also following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist