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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting 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 office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

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

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer