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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five 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. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new blue house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist