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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control 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 too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent 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 government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions 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