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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 declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become 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 power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – 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 people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote 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 procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow 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 a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer