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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really 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 process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer