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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – 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. 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 continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist