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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed 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 own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct 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.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer