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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who has a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it is illogical 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 redraw maps that secure permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist