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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a unclear right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist