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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional 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 nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted population groups; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. 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 lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members 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 columnist