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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

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

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm 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 the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist