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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 legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer