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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer