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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

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

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts setting off a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a district 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 dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ 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 motivation of retaliation to redraw maps that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, 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 the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer