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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist