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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic 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 secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality 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 disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist