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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, 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 passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist