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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats 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 delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist