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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect 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, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. 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 Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer