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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. 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 shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal 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 the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable 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. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors 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