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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal 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 humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer