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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave 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 permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist