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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations 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