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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area 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 implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist