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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions 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 initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. 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 able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer