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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people 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 continues operating smoothly.

And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the election is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer