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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal 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 without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer