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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – 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 are aware. At present, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure 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 significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist