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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer