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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once 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, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer