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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in response, 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 actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer