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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to check his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist