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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; 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 measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able 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 necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer