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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky 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, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration 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 reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 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 political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel 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 columnist