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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, 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 longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense 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, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part 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 give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer