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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign 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 lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist