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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as 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 recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy 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 respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in practice have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer