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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain 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 continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist