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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member 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 testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer