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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer