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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed 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’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering 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 bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state 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 made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer