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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 authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation 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 alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer