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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a belated reaction to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The first argument, that the measure will provoke conservatives to redraw their own districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is subpoena power, and the power to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist