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What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, 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 recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer