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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality 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 undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting 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 Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist