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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist