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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial essential 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 ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, inevitably, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist