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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a unclear right of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate government money has also defaulted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations in the near future. But the presidency continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a majority in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist 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 Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has required no any motivation of retaliation to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete absence of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad desire for a different nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of the president’s control and reduce the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the battle against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, war making or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to force associates of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer