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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer