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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area 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 genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist