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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts 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 steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer