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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the 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 control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions 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 tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true 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 mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer