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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic 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 required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only once the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary 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 holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist