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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, 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 continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government 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 representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist