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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing 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 office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer