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What, exactly, 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 turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

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

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle 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 reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains 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 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer