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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn 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 dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; 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 fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part 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 testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist