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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, 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 feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation 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 following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; 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 lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist