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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

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

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that the measure will provoke conservatives to alter their own districts in retaliation, fails as a logical point: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist