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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 declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may help California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee 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 second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause 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 after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves 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 not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist