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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist