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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions 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 Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say 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 not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer