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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy bases: a district 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 means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist