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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer