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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist 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 Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist