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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer