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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar 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 measure seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer