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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country 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, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, 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 the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer