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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the time since September 11; the president, in recent months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the proposal on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be made to act in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, 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 address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better world – in the reality that most the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how much 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 successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure is approved and California’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist