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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist 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 special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer