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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing 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 objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, 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 examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist