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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, anyway; virtually all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

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

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could help the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

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 upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have legislative, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer