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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial 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 control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer