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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing 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 select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist