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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist