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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical 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 GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist