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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered 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 control for his administration, conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the power to allocate federal funds has also shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 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 voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following California’s example in attempting to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek methods to check his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which red states do additional to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is meant to characterize a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their respective maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP 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, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have legislative, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer