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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been stripped from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a majority in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of 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 the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for methods 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’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: 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 truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that guarantee long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s 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 better world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and reduce the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer