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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative 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 his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party 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 belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer