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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist