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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky 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 himself, authorizing 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 management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can seem rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their district lines via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, 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 second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military 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 the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, 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 something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist