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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 declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, 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 operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist