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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist