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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the federal 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 issue of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended 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 additional five positions in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most the left, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the autocratic advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel members 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 writer