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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning 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 initial argument, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel members of his inner circle 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