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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have 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 federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other 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 nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise 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.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer