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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting 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 party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire 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 not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist