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What, exactly, 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 right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area 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 truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer