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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. 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 required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist