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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in the past few months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has likewise defaulted to the executive, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. At least, large sections of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by Democrats, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a response to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more positions in the state House representation 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 lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without debate. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to foreclose 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 way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that guarantee long-term positions for themselves: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown necessary in order to slow the autocratic creep of the president’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have lawmaking, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five 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 stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a institution with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates 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 writer