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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions 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 long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; 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 impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer