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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people 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 operating smoothly.

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

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek methods to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist