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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause 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 once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist