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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been taken away from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

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

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, 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 member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist