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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist