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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may 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 approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. 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 say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. 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 negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer