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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist