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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 power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear 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 action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer