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What, precisely, 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 vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has 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 Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict 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 won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. 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 broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer