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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 initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: 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 in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer