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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system 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 initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer