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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 power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer