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What, exactly, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist