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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off 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 questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome 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 views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors 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