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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer