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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn 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 truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act 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 not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer