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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 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 upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer