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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist