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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give the GOP an five more 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 Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer