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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire 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 Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer