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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

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, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured 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 adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also following California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy 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 initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable 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. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer