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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer