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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion 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 valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer