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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem 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’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal 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 additional five 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 Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer