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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for their party: 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, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist