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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy 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 truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning 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 spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, desire 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 targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist