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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions 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 power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive 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, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist