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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer