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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar 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 lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant 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 objections on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, 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 pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist