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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area 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 truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize 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 merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist