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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds 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 the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist