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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist