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What, precisely, is the purpose of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: 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 genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members 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 ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist