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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire 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 demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become 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 give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist