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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term 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 installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist