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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer