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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful 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 other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist