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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial 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 asserted additional of that control for his administration, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government just shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have long embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial redistricting panels, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with concern and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: 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 engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are take office, they will become a part of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer