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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era 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 Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist