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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials 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 authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist