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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized spending and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire 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 seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will give the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters respond with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, 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 authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist