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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ 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 additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will provide Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled 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 ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist