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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to trends occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats 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 following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems likely to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on more purely principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right 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 undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the reverse; it is not good that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer