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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic 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 guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer