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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer