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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, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts 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 little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, 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-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist