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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial 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 state measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, 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’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. 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 new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer