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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic bases: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist