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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. 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 continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; 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 measures have become essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist