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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

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

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way 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 state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer