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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist