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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. At present, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled such as California, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an five more positions in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, necessarily, that the power of opposing views is muted, and that the process of debate, argument and persuasion that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first argument, that the measure will spur conservatives to alter their own maps in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The second objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to address the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored population groups; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and reduce the level of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have legislative, military or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to probe the president, to televise their investigations into his actions and to force associates of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist