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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, 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 dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 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 seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication 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 won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer