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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch continues humming along.

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

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to change maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist