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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens 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 presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn 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 representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once 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 practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer